{
 "id": "robert-frost/a-star-in-a-stone-boat",
 "title": "A Star in a Stone-Boat",
 "poet": "Robert Frost",
 "poet_slug": "robert-frost",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "New Hampshire",
 "book_slug": "new-hampshire",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 2,
 "container": "Notes",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1923,
  "venue": "New Hampshire (1923)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/newhampshirepoem00fros_0",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7008086"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/robert-frost_new-hampshire",
  "file": "new-hampshire.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/58611",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000433611"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 57,
  "n_stanzas": 19,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 51,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Never tell me that not one star of all",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That slip from heaven at night and softly fall",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some laborer found one faded and stone cold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And saving that its weight suggested gold,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And tugged it from his first too certain hold,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He noticed nothing in it to remark.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He was not used to handling stars thrown dark",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lifeless from an interrupted arc.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He did not recognize in that smooth coal",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The one thing palpable besides the soul",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To penetrate the air in which we roll.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He did not see how like a flying thing",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It brooded ant-eggs, and had one large wing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "One not so large for flying in a ring,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And a long Bird of Paradise’s tail,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Though these when not in use to fly and trail",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It drew back in its body like a snail);",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Nor know that he might move it from the spot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The harm was done; from having been star-shot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The very nature of the soil was hot",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "And burning to yield flowers instead of grain,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He moved it roughly with an iron bar,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He loaded an old stone-boat with the star",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And not, as you might think, a flying car,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Such as even poets would admit perforce",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More practical than Pegasus the horse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If it could put a star back in its course.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "He dragged it through the ploughed ground at a pace",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But faintly reminiscent of the race",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of jostling rock in interstellar space.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "It went for building stone, and I, as though",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Commanded in a dream, forever go",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To right the wrong that this should have been so.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Yet ask where else it could have gone as well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I do not know⁠—I cannot stop to tell:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He might have left it lying where it fell.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "From following walls I never lift my eye",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Except at night to places in the sky",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where showers of charted meteors let fly.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Some may know what they seek in school and church,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And why they seek it there; for what I search",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Sure that though not a star of death and birth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth,",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Though not, I say, a star of death and sin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It yet has poles, and only needs a spin",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To show its worldly nature and begin",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "To chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And run off in strange tangents with my arm",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As fish do with the line in first alarm.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Such as it is, it promises the prize",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of the one world complete in any size",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I am like to compass, fool or wise.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}